DEATH AS THE ULTIMATE HEALER

(About Alzheimer’s Disease, energetic contagion and transfiguration)

I have long held a belief that I cannot prove: that people often die in a way that balances (or compensates for) something they did not receive (enough of) in life. One teaching from Christianity (the cosmology of my childhood) is that “Death is the ultimate healing because a soul transitions to “eternal life with God in Heaven”. That is no longer my belief system and it is not what I meant with my statement. In this essay I will explain what I do mean.

Many years ago I was taught (on a shamanic practitioner training) that all diseases have a spiritual cause and that the field of Western medicine views illness “mechanically”. By this I mean that one part of us has broken or is malfunctioning, so we fix or replace that part, with no attention given to the rest of the “machine” (human body). Many of us know that holistic medicine looks at a much larger picture, where everything is connected and where it is understood that energetic things can manifest in physical or material ways.

The operating principle behind shamanic healing work is that we ask spirit allies to help us identify the spiritual causes of disease (dis-ease) and from there we then work to pull the entire situation, or constellation of events, back into balance and harmony. That is how I learned that illnesses have both a language (symbolism) and grammar (mythology). I find this subject so fascinating that I have a draft book on my computer about the topic.

My shamanic practice in inner city London eventually morphed into a school (as my focus shifted to teaching). Fifteen years of practising one-to-one healing work (though I have also worked with couples and entire families) have taught me a vast amount about the energetic nature of dis-ease (something that is not at ease, as the word suggests). I learned that many diseases have an ancestral component as well as social, environmental and even generational dimensions. In other words: ideally we would not treat only the entire individual, but larger situations and clusters of people. (But obviously the healing journey needs to start somewhere! And not everyone is open to this way of working).

The last two-and-half years have forced me to focus on another dimension of disease: the way that an illness or serious condition (as it progresses) impacts other people energetically. If that process goes unchecked, meaning that rules and boundaries for containment are not established, a serious illness or condition will behave like a virus and entangle other people in a never-ending run of unhealthy scenarios.

In our society we are well aware of this when it comes to, for instance, alcoholism and other addictions (and Twelve Step programs exist, even for relatives, not only the primary people affected). And thankfully, organisations offering support for carer-givers also exist. I also found some five star YouTube channels helping people navigate the dementia of a loved one. Having said that, I do not think that the common overall situation (of unhealthy entanglement in dis-ease) will improve until there is more awareness (of both the issues and possible strategies) in our culture.

Alzheimer’s Disease

My 91 year old mother-in-law (in this piece I will use the acronym MIL instead of her name, to preserve her anonymity) was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease (a common form of dementia) two-and-half years ago. Alzheimer’s is a well-documented condition, with a well-researched (and predictable) progression in terms of loss of cognitive and physical functioning. But there were still big surprises ahead, things I had not heard anyone put into words before.

Recently a lifelong friend of MIL died. He was a resident in the same nursing home where she now lives. He too had well-advanced dementia. When my husband told her the sad news about his passing she said: “No worries, I will call him up and ask him about the date and details of his funeral!” That is Alzheimer’s speaking.

Alzheimer's Disease (AD for short) is a neurodegenerative disease that often starts slowly but progressively worsens or accelerates. It is the cause of 60–70% of all  cases of dementia. The most common early symptom, observed by others, is memory problems. Over time we also see mood swings (often paired with episodes of wild suspicion: misplaced objects have surely been “stolen by thieves or intruders” etc.)

The ability (and motivation) to organise oneself evaporates. Alzheimer’s patients cannot focus long enough to complete actions (or even remember that they ever started an action). Over time this leads to self-neglect and behavioural issues. People thus affected eventually lose control over their bodily functions and the ultimate outcome is death. The typical life expectancy following a diagnosis is 3 – 9 years (but some people, younger at the time of diagnosis, live with the condition for over 20 years).

Before going any further, let me state very clearly that Alzheimer’s is NOT a contagious disease in any medical or biological sense. Also that I am NOT a medical professional!

The exact cause of Alzheimer’s has not (yet) been defined but it appears to be largely associated with amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and loss of neuronal connections in the brain. And in truth I do not understand exactly what all those things are either! In my own layperson words: people with this disease start losing neural pathways in the brain (connections between brain synapses) at an alarming rate.

That is why learning a foreign language or solving daily puzzles and riddles is often recommended as a cognitive strategy to people with a higher risk (based on medical and genetic testing) of developing the disease. By creating alternative neural pathways, the brain will have more options for “traffic diversions” when cognitive “roadblocks” start occurring. (Will having learned 23 languages in this lifetime keep Alzheimer’s at bay in my old age? We will see!)

People with Alzheimer’s can continue to live alone in the early stages (when occasional mishaps occur) but over time they become reliant on caregivers and eventually need 24/7 care and supervision. This places an immense burden on care-givers, especially those caring for a parent or partner in their own home.

Europe versus US

My husband is his mother’s only child, so there are no siblings to share the burden or decision-making process. The entire responsibility falls squarely on our family (my husband, me and our three sons). For the same reason there are no disagreements between siblings either! She is in Sweden and we are based in London, UK. Thankfully we have a house in Sweden where we spend the holidays. Having said that, our house is still a 4-hour drive north of the town where she lives (so every visit is an 8-hour roundtrip, at this time of year a slow journey on treacherous iced-up roads).

We have been extremely fortunate in that she is a Swedish national living in Sweden. Sweden is a hyper-organised country with an impressive (at times even oppressive!) welfare state. It has solutions and dedicated care providers for almost every cause known to humankind. On a practical level this has meant arranging adequate local care (and making about 12 phone calls every day to synchronize the care providers). We never considered relocating our own family to (her small town in) Sweden.

Our eldest son (21 at the time of diagnosis) suggested we move her to London instead, to come live with us. I asked him who, in our busy family of five, would give up their full time job or university studies to look after her day and night, seven days and nights a week. He could not really answer this but I suspect he had me in mind for the job! (Aren’t human mothers the closest thing to the Divine Mother?!) I offered up yet another prayer of gratitude for the Swedish welfare state (there have been many, along this journey!)

When MIL was diagnosed I spent many hours researching Alzheimer’s. I soon discovered how lucky we were to be Europeans because in the US people commonly spend their own life savings to provide care for parents and then enter their own old age without financial resources. What happens if you do not have children to make that same sacrifice for you?

Contagion

For me the most shocking observation has been how “contagious” Alzheimer’s is on the everyday level. It creeps and seeps into every area of our family life and marriage. Nothing is safe from its greedy tendrils.

We soon reached a point where every sentence my husband spoke started with the words “My mother…” or “I just spoke to my mother…” And if not that, the sentence started with “You won’t believe what happened today…” _With Alzheimer’s you definitely learn to expect the unexpected!

MIL had become the default topic in our house, even with three young people (aged, over this period of three years, anywhere between 17 – 24 years of age) in our parental care. She was affecting (and devouring) even the blocks of time and energy that we never assigned to her.

Therefore I sat my husband down and asked that we establish some ground rules around 24/7 Alzheimer’s responsibilities (and the carers in Sweden ringing us at all hours, without ever calculating any time difference. Some of the most upsetting phone calls came at 2 am while we took our sons on a long-promised break to New York City, which had already been cancelled three times due to my own mother’s decline and death in 2022). This was the high school graduation present for our youngest son.

And no, as an only child my husband never switches off his phone (I did ask for that, many times). “What if she has a fall?” “What if there is an emergency?”

Despite her advancing Alzheimer’s MIL became well-trained to call her son in London, rather than pressing the big red button on the alarm strapped to her wrist. I put up an immense fight and she was re-trained to call the care providers instead. One month after reaching that milestone she had a leg amputated (due to a deep vein thrombosis) and the picture changed completely again.

We found her a place in a nursing home and then faced the mammoth job of clearing out her house. That soon became a topic in its own right and the Mount Everest of clutter needing re-homing blotted out the Sun for about five months. MIL had been an enthusiastic collector for 70 years (I am trying not to use the word hoarding here). She is a human magpie. No pretty glittering thing is safe!

Into The Fog

Speaking selfishly, the worst thing was that I developed some memory problems myself, in this period of relentless pressure (please note that I was still grieving and processing my own mother’s recent death as well). I still don’t know whether it was the overload (husband and I both work full time) or the dissolving of all boundaries which had made life manageable, even magical and enjoyable, before.

I started dreaming about fog. I found myself writing daily poems about walking around in dense fog. People assured me at regular intervals that they had already told me something before and I honestly had no memory of it. I had to ask them to repeat things.

Privately I was aghast: this is not me!

From early childhood, photographic memory has always been one of my super powers. My students call me “The Human Wikipedia”! People would ask me about a book I had read 23 years earlier and I could point them to the correct page for some quote or relevant passage (just by visualizing the book). I could replay conversations with people verbatim. I could re-run entire concerts in my own head, note by note. I hardly ever forgot anything at all! I use about 23 languages when I do research (and often venture into even more, closely related, languages). I learn foreign languages for fun, a habit started in grammar school.

I was horrified by my own cognitive wobble, at age 56! At regular intervals I asked myself or my husband: “Am I in the early stages of Alzheimer’s myself?!” Husband would not even “go there”, he’d leave the room or the conversation. His response was understandable, but the situation truly freaked me out.

A day came where I realized I needed a break from the Alzheimer’s dramas and chronicles, a clear case of sink or swim. It was either that or failing my children and students (flying long distances to work with me) by not being fully present to them.

My husband and I sat down once again and formulated a series of hard boundaries and rules around bringing MIL’s “misadventures” into our family life. We agreed on a dedicated time a day where updates occurred, so the rest of the day could free of it.

In September 2023 I taught a course, here at my Forest School in Sweden, where the students exclaimed: “How on earth do you hold all this in your memory, so much material in in so many languages?!” I will admit that I spoke private prayer: Hallelujah, my fabulous memory is BACK (or at least returning to me, in the safe space I have carved out for myself). GRATITUDE!!

Closing reflections

How people care for live-in relatives with Alzheimer’s for years on end, I cannot begin to comprehend. It would be their full time job, as it is not possible to hold down another full time job simultaneously. Having said that, even a 40 hour working week is very part time compared to providing 24/7 care. You are literally walking into the fog, with someone.

For me this also poses another key question: what was your relationship with this person, before dementia started devouring their brain? Before they started dying by increments, a little every day. They often call Alzheimer’s “The Long Goodbye” for a reason. They deserve the best possible care but you (the carer) deserve to have life quality and some time to yourself too!

If the family member (or person) concerned was not a positive or kind presence in your life while high-functioning, they are unlikely to become that once they fall ill. And, for fear of being a prophet of doom, I urge you to think through possible scenarios long before “the fog” descends, on both them and you. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

If my husband is ever diagnosed with dementia (god forbid) I hope I will find creative and poetic ways of “mist-walking” with him and catching the balls his erratic mind throws at me. After many decades together (I met him when I was 19 years old and he was 20) anything less is not good enough. At least we share a lot of fairly early memories (the ones that Alzheimer’s, largely, spares). Perhaps we stand a chance of still recognizing each other, even in the neuro-jungle of advanced old age?

And of course I hope he would do the same thing for me. (I have already told him to please put lots of art materials in front of me, if the dreaded day comes!) His track record with MIL demonstrates that he is capable of providing excellent care.

Death as the Ultimate Healer

Now back to my starting point: Alzheimer’s is a disease that relieves you of all and any responsibility for yourself. Once it progresses others tend to you, cook for you, take care of all practicalities. Not just that, but carers for people with Alzheimer’s learn to avoid confrontations and (in an ideal world) they never disagree or argue with you (because you, the patient, are no longer able to stand up for yourself and argue back). Alzheimer carers learn to navigate whirlpools in conversations in clever (but ideally truthful) ways.

When a 91-year old asks “Where are my parents?” You don’t say: “They have been dead for 45 years”. You say: “There are not here right now!” and you redirect the conversation (which the person does not remember anyway, five minutes later).

At the death of my own parents (from different causes, (neither of them had Alzheimer’s) I observed that “being looked after like a new born baby”, surrounded by loved ones focussing their undivided attention on you, bringing only the best of themselves into the room, the naked devotion, the cancelling of all other commitments (etc.) is profoundly healing. For the dying person time is slowing down and about to stop anyway. (I sometimes visualise that as one of those mathematical variables tending to zero while another factor, in the same equation, tends to infinity!)

It has been said that a lot of human suffering (and many mental health issues) is caused by not being loved the way all human beings needs to be. This often starts in childhood and sets certain patterns (behaviours shaped by expectations and defence mechanisms) in motion. Those very patterns are like dance moves which invite others to “tango” with us in a familiar pattern of stepping back and forth. Those patterns can be dysfunctional to the point of lethal.

A good death (as in a healing death) corrects that emotional configuration. MIL is still with us (we face another pilgrimage on iced-up roads tomorrow!) but when my own mother died (in August 2022), there was so much love in the room, that there was Holiness (she was a Christian so I am choosing to use a Christian word) present. The deep love felt by many created a safe cocoon around her, in which she could take the big step of dying and leaving this world. It was a force field that transfigured all of us (my two brothers and me) present. It also extended to other people in close proximity: her best friend, the nursing staff etc.

As a closing note for the living, let me point out that Alzheimer’s does also make certain things easier: MIL used to worry herself senseless (and then needed to be paid for her spiritual labours on our behalf with a constant diet of reassuring phone calls). She is no longer able to worry. Her condition forces her to live almost completely in the moment. That has also taught us some powerful things about living in the Here and Now. We can all learn many powerful lessons from fog-walking Elders, trying to find their way Home, to the Eternal Realm or Land of the Ancestors. In her case: Heaven.

I aim to post two essays a week here on Substack, but if you would like to see my daily posts about about sacred art, Nordic spirituality and my life as a Forest Witch, please follow me on Instagram or Facebook, thank you!

PS I am adding a final (but very important) note here, in response to what Caitlin Matthews just wrote in the first comment: when loved ones become incapacitated and loose their ability to communicate (and the same things goes for tiny or even unborn babies, people with severe disabilities or people in a coma) a skilled spirit worker can talk to their soul or Higher Self about their needs and wishes. In my classes I always give the example of making the decision to switch of life support or not. Consult (and inform) the soul of the person concerned please!!

Imelda Almqvist, Forest House and School, Sweden

BIO FOR IMELDA ALMQVIST

Imelda Almqvist is an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seiðr/Old Norse Traditions (the ancestral wisdom teachings of Northern Europe). So far she has written four non-fiction books and two picture books for children. Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life (Using shamanism creatively with young people of all ages) in 2016, Sacred Art: A Hollow Bone for Spirit (Where Art Meets Shamanism) in 2019, Medicine of the Imagination - Dwelling in Possibility (an impassioned plea for fearless imagination) in 2020 and North Sea Water In My Veins (The Pre-Christian spirituality of the Low Countries) will be published in June 2022.

The Green Bear is a series of picture book for children, aged 3 – 8 years. The stories and vibrant artwork, set in Scandinavia, invite children to explore enchanting parallel worlds and to keep their sense of magic alive as they grow up.

Imelda has presented her work on both The Shift Network and Sounds True. She appears in a TV program, titled Ice Age Shaman, made for the Smithsonian Museum, in the series Mystic Britain, talking about Mesolithic arctic deer shamanism.

Imelda is currently working on a handbook for rune magicians (about the runes of the Elder Futhark) and on more books in the Green Bear Series. Imelda runs an on-line school called Pregnant Hag Teachings, where all classes she teaches remain available as recordings which can be watched any time!

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Online School:                  https://pregnant-hag-teachings.teachable.com/courses/

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Twitter: @ImeldaAlmqvist